Poem of William Hermanns

          Our Christian Atom

Corruption speaks to villainy:
"Come, let us use the Christian Church.
Crime, confession, crime, confession
make masses kneel with saving urge."

And villainy speaks to corruption:
"Is there a holier intuition
of Hell, than what you said to me.
Let's be allies of Christian fruition.

"Two thousand years wade through blood.
The Jews nailed Jesus to the Cross
and blood is Satan's choicest food.
With us he wades along, our boss."

Some thousand more Jews dragged the cross
of Roman Caesars on their shoulders.
Let this not shake you up, good Christians --
Hell loves the truth that smells and smolders.

Hell loves the word "I am better than thou."
Like birds of the same luring feather
are faith and knife for two thousand years.
They still march blissfully together.

I lived with Satan at Verdun.
The French Church and the German Church
held high the Cross to a million youth.
The altars blessed our killing urge.

Crusades, the burning stakes and Auschwitz
heap the confessions, layer on layer.
Satanic undercurrents now
betroth the atom to our prayer.

I learned man's villainy is eternal,
the Church, a time-bound Altar space.
My dying comrades testified:
Only the soul has saving grace.

The atom now is myth's messiah.
My soul has waded through blood enough.
Come, Soul, give me a childlike heart,
and hell I can rebuff.

                              William Hermanns    [P413]